Investigators
with Kyrgyzstan's security service, the KNB, charged Farafonov on February 12 with
inciting ethnic hatred through media, a count that carries a penalty of up to
three years' imprisonment, according to news reports. His trial is scheduled to start on
Thursday in the capital, Bishkek, the independent regional news website Ferghana Newsreported.

Farafonov
denied the accusations, and said he was being prosecuted in retaliation for his
journalism, regional press reports said. He had written a series of analytical
articles for the website of the Moscow-based foundation Russkoye Yedinstvo (Russian Unity), and for regional news websites CentrAsia, NewsAsia, and Parus, according
to Ferghana News. In his articles, the journalist
criticized Kyrgyz politics and the spread of nationalism in the Kyrgyz-language
media, and commented on the potential outcomes of the October 2011 presidential
vote on the lives of ethnic minorities, including Russians, in Kyrgyzstan, news
reports said.

KNB
spokesperson Nurlan Toktaliyev told the independent
news website 24.kg that the KNB had
contacted experts from the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences, as well as Internet
users, and asked them to review the journalist's articles. The indictment was
based on their review, news reports said. Kyrgyz ombudsman, Tursunbek Akun,
called the charges unfair, and told 24.kg that the journalist had a constitutional right to express his opinion.

At
a February 22 press conference in Bishkek, Farafonov told local journalists
that the KNB threatened to imprison him for up to 48 years or give him a
maximum sentence for each of the 16 articles the investigators deemed extremist,
local press reported.

"This
is a deeply sinister case where the secret police can decide what a journalist
can and cannot write," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "The
prosecution must immediately drop all charges against Vladimir Farafonov.
Political reporting is not a crime."